About

The percentage of Americans with health-insurance coverage from their employers has fallen steadily over the past three years to less than 45% in February, down from 50% in January 2008, the survey found.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans insured through government-backed health coverage, such as Medicare, Medicaid and military benefits, has risen about 3 percentage points to more than one in four adults, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index released Friday. And the percentage of uninsured people has stayed steady at about 16% over the past two years.

"Government healthcare coverage has increased among all age groups, not just seniors, suggesting that unemployment, rather than aging baby boomers, is contributing more to the uptick in the number of Americans with government health care," Gallup said in a statement. Unemployment has remained above the 9% threshold for most of the past two years.

President Barack Obama last year signed a health-care reform bill designed to reduce the number of uninsured Americans. Most of those policies don't take effect until 2014, however, and many will be determined on a state-by-state basis.

Timing Your Spending

Add a Comment

4 Comments

Filter by:

frank1946

American Healthcare is failing, nobody can pay for it, including the Federal Government..............cancel all the exotic and expensive stuff, insuranceshould cover only the basics, no transplants, no joints/hips, etc. There isno $$$ for all the current services,Emergency Rooms are a Crime in terms ofcost, a flu visit costs $ 4,000...........we have all gone insane in HealthcareServices it is destroying America !

As fewer americans get health insurance, those left will continue to pay higher and higher premiums. The answer - everyone participating - our new healthcare legislation does this and so much more. Fidelity just reported that the corporate health insurers costs went down for the first time in ten years, but do you think they'll lower our rates? No. Not without being held accountable for increases thru the healthcare legislation. I guess this is why the gop fights so badly - their donors record profits just might be curbed.